Terms of Use
The Pending — operated by The Pending GmbH
Version: 22 October 2026
1. Our service and your contract
The Pending GmbH, Nestroystraße 13, 81373 Munich, Germany, registered with Amtsgericht München under HRB 315656, VAT ID DE360039760, operates The Pending. Managing directors: Tim Kriegler and Niklas Kornel. Contact: service@thepending.app.
These Terms cover our Agency software, community, portfolios and native apps. Features include professional profiles, talent and opportunity discovery, applications, projects, CRM, AI assistance, publishing, messaging, Pages and Circles. Availability and limits depend on the offer you select. We are not a party to employment, booking or other engagement contracts between users and do not guarantee work, clients or hiring results.
Features may launch at different times on the website and in the apps. These Terms describe the services to which they apply, not a promise that every described feature is already available or included in your plan. For an existing contract, a published revision takes effect only through the applicable notice and agreement process; publication alone does not replace previously agreed terms.
Your account contract begins when we accept your registration. A paid order creates the additional contract described in its checkout and confirmation. Review the offer, price, taxes, duration and renewal conditions before ordering. Individual agreements take precedence where applicable. The Refund Policy and Community Guidelines form part of the applicable service rules. The Privacy Policy provides information; accepting these Terms is not consent to optional data processing.
Separate Partnership Terms govern business advertising bookings and advertising credits. These Terms do not create an entitlement to creator revenue sharing or other rewards that have not been separately offered.
2. Eligibility, accounts and security
You must be at least 18 and legally able to enter the contract. Provide accurate information and be authorised to act for any organisation you represent. Registration may use email or supported Google, Apple or Microsoft sign-in.
Keep credentials secure and notify us promptly of suspected misuse. Account linking requires proof of control. Do not use additional accounts to evade restrictions, limits or reward rules. A person whose access was terminated for abuse must obtain our permission before re-registering.
Features and purchases may be restricted by country, applicable law or the availability shown in the product. Do not evade lawful restrictions. A configured country restriction does not imply that every restricted country is subject to comprehensive sanctions.
3. Responsible use
Use the service lawfully and respect other people's rights. Do not commit fraud, impersonate others, harass or threaten people, publish private information without authority, distribute malicious code, interfere with security, systematically scrape the service, send unsolicited bulk messages or manipulate credits and rewards.
The Community Guidelines govern content, including artistic nudity and generated media. AI-generated images, audio and video are permitted in portfolios, subject to rights, safety and the other content rules. The human-made-media restriction continues to apply when media is published to community surfaces, including Pages and Circles. They permit political creative work and discussion of the creative industries; they do not permit unrelated general political campaigning. Lawful criticism is not prohibited merely because it is negative.
You must have the necessary rights to upload, submit or share material. When submitting a person for an opportunity or administering their portfolio, have authority or another valid legal basis and inform them appropriately. Studio Access ends when revoked.
Customers control the content and audiences of their Listings, applications, talent records and share/review links. Only disclose information to authorised recipients, use appropriate access restrictions and revoke unnecessary links. Do not knowingly reintroduce a person into discovery or contact workflows contrary to a valid objection.
Listings must describe genuine opportunities and material conditions accurately. Do not impose unlawful discriminatory criteria. Companies publish commercial jobs through Listings; genuine creative collaborations and opportunities shared by individual creatives follow the Community Guidelines. Identify advertising where the law requires it. Merely showing your work or mentioning a brand does not automatically make a post an advertisement.
3a. Content moderation and complaints
Our contact for users and authorities under Articles 11 and 12 of the Digital Services Act is service@thepending.app. We accept German and English communication.
Report suspected illegal content through the available reporting tools or report@thepending.app. Include its exact location, why you consider it illegal, your name and email, and a statement that the notice is accurate and submitted in good faith. Identifying details are not required where the applicable exception for reports concerning child sexual abuse offences applies. Email reporting does not require an account.
We assess notices diligently and objectively, acknowledge receipt and communicate the outcome to the reporter through the account notification or, for email notices, where contact information is available. Moderation may use technical tools and human review. On community surfaces subject to generated-media checks, a flag or an incomplete required check can prevent publication of the affected media. Portfolio uploads are exempt from those generated-media checks. A technical failure is not proof of misconduct. You can retry or request human review; the affected media remains unpublished until cleared.
Depending on severity, context and repetition, we may request corrections, warn, label, restrict or remove content, restrict features, suspend an account or terminate access. There is no mandatory three-strike sequence. Urgent safety issues or serious violations can require immediate action. Where required, we explain the facts, legal or contractual basis, use of automation and available remedies.
Challenge a decision through the offered review function or service@thepending.app, identifying the decision and your reasons. We correct errors established on review. Applicable rights to out-of-court dispute settlement and judicial remedies remain available. Repeated manifestly unlawful content or manifestly unfounded notices can lead to proportionate restrictions, with prior warning where required.
4. Content, audiences and intellectual property
You retain rights in your content. You grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence limited to hosting, processing, reproducing and displaying it as needed to provide the requested service and sharing functions. This includes technical copies, previews and permitted reshares to your selected audiences. It does not authorise unrelated marketing use of private material or foundation-model training.
After removal, the licence continues only as necessary for permitted surviving shared content, recovery, backups or legal preservation. Deletion stages are described in the Privacy Policy. Public recipients may have made independent copies. Scene expiry removes active display; it does not promise immediate erasure of every copy. Page content can remain with another authorised administrator after personal account closure.
Our software, branding and other platform intellectual property remain ours or our licensors'. You receive the right to use the service within your contract, subject to these Terms and mandatory law.
5. Plans, subscriptions and Pens
The offer before payment states included features, usage limits, total payable price, billing interval and renewal conditions. Consumer prices include applicable taxes. Store and web prices may differ. You receive an order confirmation. Payment and entitlement processing can involve Stripe, Apple, Google and RevenueCat as explained in the Privacy Policy.
Pens are service credits, not money or a transferable investment. The charge for an action is shown before you request it or authorise a recurring helper. Plan-included Pens reset according to the plan's billing cycle and do not roll over. Purchased pack Pens do not expire while the account remains available under the applicable contract. The current ledger consumes purchased pack Pens before included Pens. Goodwill, referral and feedback Pens have no cash value.
Incorrect deductions are corrected. Any credit redenomination must preserve purchased usable value and be announced at least 14 days in advance. A newly displayed price does not by itself change existing contractual rights. Plan changes take effect under the charge, credit and timing shown when you confirm them.
Subscriptions renew only under the agreed terms and applicable law. For German consumer contracts continuing after an initial term, mandatory limits on extensions and cancellation periods apply. A failed payment may lead to a proportionate restriction after appropriate notice, without eliminating statutory rights.
Our Refund and Withdrawal Policy explains statutory withdrawal, defects and the additional 14-day guarantee for completely unused direct web purchases. Using part of a Pen pack does not automatically remove statutory rights. The additional guarantee does not cover B2B advertising credits under the separate Partnership Terms.
Apple/Google purchases follow the seller, billing and cancellation arrangements shown by the store. Relevant store licence terms, including Apple's standard EULA where applicable, apply to app distribution. These Terms govern our platform service and do not exclude mandatory store-related rights.
6. Cancellation, suspension and service changes
Cancel a direct web subscription through billing, the online cancellation function or service@thepending.app. Cancellation normally takes effect at the end of the paid period unless an earlier right applies. Statutory withdrawal is separate and can be exercised through our withdrawal function, email or another clear statement.
Cancel store subscriptions in Apple or Google subscription settings. Uninstalling the app or deleting your Pending account does not itself cancel store billing. An accepted self-service account-deletion request from Agency Settings, the community or the app deactivates access immediately and schedules account purge after a 14-day recovery period. Contact support during that period to request recovery. If your account owns a project with another active co-administrator or an open co-administrator invitation, self-service deletion can be blocked before deactivation. The screen identifies the projects and the support route. A previously accepted purge that is blocked or fails stays open for resolution. Contact us to resolve the shared records and your erasure request; a technical block does not remove your rights. Retained customer records, shared content and backup copies follow the separate rules described in the Privacy Policy. Export needed information beforehand.
We may suspend or terminate access for a material breach, unlawful use or non-payment, subject to proportionality, required notice and the right to remedy a breach where applicable. Content-related measures follow Section 3a. Both parties retain mandatory termination rights.
Maintenance and faults can affect availability. We may make necessary legal, security and technical changes. Other changes to paid digital services require a valid contractual/legal basis and the applicable notice, access and termination protections. We will not use a general change clause to remove mandatory rights or retrospectively reduce a purchase.
7. Liability and service quality
We are liable without limitation for intent, gross negligence, injury to life, body or health, express guarantees and liability that cannot lawfully be limited. For slight negligence affecting an essential contractual obligation, liability is limited to reasonably foreseeable loss typical of the contract to the extent permitted by law. Mandatory rights concerning defective digital products and services remain unaffected.
External opportunities and AI outputs can be inaccurate or incomplete. This does not exclude our responsibility for our own contractual duties. No blanket no-fault indemnity is imposed on consumers.
8. AI features and recommendations
AI supports search, matching, application analysis, document extraction, drafting, email classification and Spotty assistance. Review outputs before relying on them or sending them to others. We do not guarantee a hiring outcome or the correctness of every generated statement.
Operating the community includes analysis of eligible content for organisation, search and recommendations, and required publication checks for prohibited media. You cannot bypass a required publication check while publishing the affected media. Generated-media checks and semantic matching serve different purposes; failure to obtain a matching vector does not itself mean that content breaks our rules. Processing providers, data uses and choices are described in the Privacy Policy and relevant feature explanations. These Terms are not a blanket permission for optional analytics, personalised advertising, private-content search or Spotty memory.
Professional matching considers skills, experience, location, availability and stated requirements. The Job Finder gender filter uses only an express Search Profile preference. Application analysis produces advisory scores and recommendations; optional score sorting does not itself decide an application. Managers can change statuses individually or in batches and approve Spotty proposals.
You must not use an AI score as the sole basis for rejecting a candidate or another decision significantly affecting them. Review relevant original information and apply an independent assessment. Do not use health/disability, racial or ethnic origin, religion or sexual orientation as inputs to automated suitability scoring or job filtering. A lawful basis for holding a document does not automatically permit every use of its contents.
Customers remain responsible for their applicable recruitment, transparency, anti-discrimination and automated-decision duties. Our own provider obligations remain ours. Contact us for an explanation or to request review of a disputed result.
Community recommendations are separate from applicant scoring. They can use expressed and inferred interests, connections, engagement, recency and a plan-based boost. The main feed offers newest-first ordering. Optional advertising uses separate consent; it does not share that consent with analytics or AI memory.
9. Customer-controlled personal data
When you decide why and how applicant, talent or CRM data is used, you are responsible as controller for lawful collection, appropriate information, accuracy, necessary access, retention and rights requests. This includes imported records and information obtained from public sources. Special-category data requires an applicable Article 9 condition in addition to an Article 6 basis; a person's participation is not blanket consent.
The following processing terms apply where we act as your processor. They must be read with the processing description, security measures and the customer-specific sub-processor schedule supplied for the service. That schedule must identify the actual recipients and transfer arrangements before they process your customer data; a general list of brands in a privacy notice is not a substitute.
- Scope and instructions. We process applicant, talent, CRM and associated correspondence data to host, organise, retrieve, analyse as instructed, share with authorised recipients, export and delete it for the duration of your use and agreed return/deletion period. Subjects include applicants, creatives, professional contacts and correspondents. Data can include identity/contact details, professional information, applications, attachments, notes, evaluations and customer-configured fields. Processing, including transfers, follows your documented instructions. We inform you of a legally required departure unless prohibited, and notify you if an instruction appears unlawful.
- Confidentiality and safeguards. Authorised personnel are bound to confidentiality. Measures include role- and account-based access restrictions, authentication, protected private-file access, encrypted transport, credential protection, request validation, rate limits and verification of relevant payment webhooks. We maintain risk-appropriate security, recovery, deletion and review arrangements and provide their applicable details to you. These Terms do not represent that every administrative account has mandatory MFA or that all backup copies expire within 30 days.
- Sub-processors. You give general written authorisation for the sub-processors identified in your agreed schedule. Before an addition or replacement processes your affected data, we give at least 360 calendar days' advance email notice identifying the provider, task, locations and objection route. We address reasonable data-protection objections before use, agree an alternative or allow termination of the affected service with a refund of unused prepaid service. Equivalent processing obligations apply downstream; we remain responsible for our sub-processor obligations.
- Assistance and incidents. Taking account of the processing and available information, we assist with rights requests, security duties, breach notifications, impact assessments and prior consultation. We notify you without undue delay on becoming aware of a personal-data breach affecting your data and provide available details and updates.
- Return and deletion. At the end of the processing service, we return or delete customer data at your choice, including copies, unless law requires retention. Recovery copies must be protected against ordinary use and erased under the agreed schedule. A retention exception does not permit unrelated reuse.
- Evidence and audit. We provide necessary compliance information and allow and contribute to audits, including inspections, by you or your mandated auditor. Practical arrangements protect other customers, confidentiality and security without removing necessary audit rights.
These processing terms prevail for their subject matter. They do not turn our independently controlled community, account, billing, advertising or security activities into processing on your instructions.
10. Law, disputes and changes
German law applies, excluding the CISG, without depriving consumers of mandatory protections in their habitual country of residence. Munich is the agreed court location only for merchants, public-law entities and public-law special funds where legally permitted; statutory consumer jurisdiction remains unchanged.
We are neither obligated nor willing to participate in proceedings before a consumer arbitration board under § 36 VSBG. Applicable content-moderation remedies remain unaffected.
Material proposed changes are communicated in advance and take effect through a legally valid process. Continued use alone is not general acceptance. Earlier purchase promises and accrued rights are preserved. If a clause is invalid, applicable law governs the resulting gap. English is the source text; offered translations and mandatory local-language protections remain applicable. Nothing here overrides a right to receive or agree contractual information in a language required by law.